


Item Two

by RC_McLachlan



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M, This is what happens when you don't take Disney's wedding etiquette lessons to heart, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 01:50:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6545563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RC_McLachlan/pseuds/RC_McLachlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tony was eight years old, he learned two things.</p><p>The first was that President Ford was “pond scum,” even though Mr. Ford had been over for dinner a bunch of times and always gave Tony chocolate all the way from the White House and had special buttons that said <i>WIN</i> on them, which Tony thought were really cool. He thought his mom liked Mr. Ford—she said once that it was the mark of a good man who saw boys and girls as equals. Maybe Mr. Ford changed his mind and put it in the newspaper for his mother to see.</p><p>The second was that the best way to live life was with a predictalist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Item Two

When Tony was eight years old, he learned two things.

The first was that President Ford was “pond scum,” even though Mr. Ford had been over for dinner a bunch of times and always gave Tony chocolate all the way from the White House and had special buttons that said _WIN_ on them, which Tony thought were really cool. He thought his mom liked Mr. Ford—she said once that it was the mark of a good man who saw boys and girls as equals. Maybe Mr. Ford changed his mind and put it in the newspaper for his mother to see.

(Years later, he met Mr. Ford again at a state dinner and told him exactly what Maria Stark thought of him for the Nixon pardon. Mr. Ford sighed, buttered his second roll, and said, “Can’t say I disagree with her.”)

The second was that the best way to live life was with a predictalist.

While his mother drew devil horns and a twisty mustache on Mr. Ford’s picture in the Daily News and muttered something about ‘two tricky dicks’, Tony picked up the big pad of yellow paper his mom got him and flipped to the latest page. He read it once, twice, and then took one of his mom’s discarded pencils to change item four.

“What’s the plan for today, Tony?” His mother’s voice sounded far away, like her brain was somewhere else, and she drew a dark line that looked like an S from behind the man next to Mr. Ford in the picture.

It was Wednesday and Wednesdays were his favorite days, because it meant he got to spend two whole hours in the lab with his dad. He wasn’t allowed to talk or handle any of the big tools, but he could watch and take notes in his yellow notepad. His dad was working on a top secret element that ended in -ium like a lot of the others, and it was going to change the world. And Tony had it all figured out for him, because all good futurists had to see the future.

“I made a predictalist for dad,” he said, sliding it across the table. “See?”

At that, his mom lifted her head and the pencil in her hand stopped scratching at the newspaper. “A what?”

“A predictalist. It’s like a plan, but better.” Tony was good at planning—even his father said so once, sort of—but sometimes plans didn’t work. If Tony wanted to build a rocket bike, he couldn’t just make a rocket bike. He had to predict all the things, both good and bad, that could happen during construction. Nothing usually worked perfectly right off the bat. Sometimes lab conditions weren’t good, or equipment wasn’t working right, or his dad came in and pointed out all the things that were wrong with his plan— _schematic, Tony, it’s a schematic, you gotta pay attention_ —and he’d stop, because wasting time meant wasting money meant wasting time, and military contracts didn’t go to people who wasted time and money.

“It’s a good idea, huh, mom?” He asked, squirming up to kneel on his chair. “Because you need to be prepared for other stuff to happen when you’re doing something, because other stuff always happens. It’s more likely that something else will happen instead of what you’re doing, so I always put it second or third. This way—This way dad won’t be mad if he doesn’t get it right.”

He reached over and tugged the notepad down so he could see his own writing. His ‘K’s looked nice; he worked extra hard to make the bottom part look like a slide.

 _The Predictalist of Howard Stark  10/3/74_  
  
_1\. Uncle Obie will call and keep me on the phone for hours_  
_2\. I will sinthesize vibranium_  
_3\. Tony will say something and ruin my scientific process  
_ _4\. The lab will explode because of robot dinosaurs_

His mom looked up from the page and cocked her eyebrow at him, and he tried to do it back but he could only raise both of his eyebrows. “Robot dinosaurs, Tony?”

He shrugged. “It could happen.”

“I like it,” his mom said. A bright smile, like the sun just as it starts to go down and cuts across his eyes, broke over her face as she reached over for the pencil she used to turn Mr. Ford into the Devil. “But you don’t need to do one for dad; he can and _should_ do his own. You need to do one for you, Tony.”

“Me?”

“What’s your predicalist say?”

The notepad and pencil slid across the table to him and he took them with a thoughtful hum, turning to a new, clean page. The red lines seemed wide open, ready for anything to be written there, but he knew exactly what would go there.

“First, you write number two: the thing that you actually plan to do,” he reminded himself under his breath.

_2\. I will go to the lab and learn things so I can be a great scientist like dad_

“Then you write in the thing that’ll definitely happen for number one.”

_1\. I will make dad upset about something_

“And then you write in things that could happen.”

 _3\. Dad will kick me out of the lab and I will have to play piano with Mr. Hamlisch  
_ _4\. Dad will talk about Captain America and get sad_

There were more that followed the part where dad saw the red-white-and-blue shield hanging on the wall in the lab and would go for the bottle of Old Crow hidden with all the drills, but Tony couldn’t think of them. With a shrug, he slid the notepad back to his mom. As she looked it over, her big smile faded until all that was left was a small, tight line.

“Can you pass me the pencil, sweetie?”

He pressed it into her palm and sat back, belly suddenly cold like when she and dad shouted at each other before they left for parties. His mom began scratching at things on the paper—big swipes with the pencil—but he couldn’t see anything except the cardboard at the back of the notepad.

Finally, she scribbled something very quick before putting the pencil down. Her smile wasn’t bright like before, but he liked this one better. It made him want to smile too.

She slid the notepad back to him. He looked down.

_1\. I will ~~make dad upset about something~~ BE HAPPY_  
_2\. I will go to the lab and learn things so I can be a great scientist ~~like dad~~_  
_3. ~~Dad will kick me out of the lab and~~ I will have to play piano with Mr. Hamlisch_  
_4\. Dad will talk about Captain America and get sad_

“The lessons with Mr. Hamlisch are non-negotiable, but… I think this is a better predictalist, don’t you?” His mom slid her open hand across the table toward him, and for a second he thought she wanted the notepad back, but she waggled her fingers at him and he got it. He wasn’t a baby or anything, but he put his hand in hers and the _throb-throb-throb_ of the heartbeat in her wrist where his fingers rested made the cold in his belly melt away.

Tony looked up and smiled for her. “Yeah, okay.”

+

When Tony is… honestly, he has no idea what day it is, let alone how old he is. Like, one day he looked down to say something truly hilarious to Barton The Youngest that would almost certainly go over her head when he realized that she was just as tall as him, because she was in _college_ , and he abandoned the conversation in favor of finding a bathtub to lie in for a while until his brain came back online.

Thanks to Extremis, the passing of time doesn’t register much these days, although he can’t say that he really kept track before the injection. He used to just add 15 years for every gray hair he found, and when people asked he’d tell them he was 795.

He’s however the hell old he is when he writes the day’s predictalist, and as much as he wants to switch the first and second items on the page, he can’t. It’s inevitable. So he leaves the yellow notepad on his worktable as is, demands to know where DUMM-E hid his tie, and leaves.

The first thing on the list is:  _Battle the wedding crasher and save New York_.

The second is: _Marry Steve Rogers._

Later, Tony picks his way through a sea of rubble and broken glass to find Steve sitting on a chunk of what probably used to be St. Patrick’s Cathedral, his chin tilted to catch the last rays of the sun because, hey, there aren’t any buildings left on E 50th to block the light. Despite the ash smeared all over his face and the sluggishly bleeding head wound, Steve looks peaceful. Lounging around in bed after truly filthy morning sex peaceful.

A giant, metal suit stomping around on rocks and shit must harsh his buzz, though, because Steve opens his eyes and gives Tony a tired smile.

In for a penny. “Scooch over.”

Steve slides over to make room for Tony and doesn’t even say a word about the way Tony curls a metal arm around his shoulders to pull him close. In fact, he says nothing, content to lay his head against the armor and simply breathe.

“I’m gonna have to call up Alessandro and give the old bastard credit where credit’s due,” Tony says, squinting against the sunset. Why doesn’t he carry shades in the suit? “Your tux held up ridiculously well… you know, for Gucci.”

“It was pretty comfortable,” Steve admits. “Felt almost like wearing my reds and blues. Might have to ask Mr. Michele to make me a new uniform.”

Tony gasps and gives the traitor a playful shove. “Do me a favor? Reach behind me and take the knife out of my back. You want _him_  to design your suit? The man’s a walking, talking Throwback Thursday; he wouldn’t know style from a Coke machine if he was hit in the head by both of them. If you think I won’t fight that catty bitch for the right to dress you, you’re wrong.”

It does what he means it to do: Steve’s laughing against the armor, which analyzes his O2 sats. 99.3%. The serum will bring that up to a clean 100% in another ten seconds, but Tony just needs to be sure.

“So, is this the part where you say ‘I told you so’?” Steve asks, pressing against him to rest his head again.

“Nah,” Tony says, and if Steve weren’t using the armor as a pillow he’d shrug. “But I totally did.”

“It wouldn’t have been appropriate to invite him.”

“Has Disney taught you nothing? You _always_ invite the evil asshat to the party, even if you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t think he’d blow up the city over it, though.”

“If there’s a chance his whiny, metal ass has been left out of something, he’ll air his grievances for everyone to see,” Tony grouses, then gestures to the stupid amount of destruction around them. “By destroying Manhattan, for example.”

Last he checked in with Natasha, she, Clint, and the Hulk were escorting their uninvited guest into a holding cell at SHIELD, where Victor Von Douche would await extradition back to Latveria. Tony doesn’t like the guy any more than Steve does—which is not at all—but even he knows they should’ve sent an invitation to keep the peace. Steve had been somewhat on board with the idea (provided that Doom was as far away from the Richards party as possible) until Doom decided to pull some shit with a schoolbus full of kids, because it was a Tuesday, and Steve crossed him off the guestlist entirely.

But still. Tony’s seen _Sleeping Beauty_ enough times to know that you’re supposed to just suck it up and invite the villains.

“We’re not married.”

“Hm?”

Steve tilts his head to look up at him. “We didn’t get through the rest of it. Didn’t get to the ‘I do’s.”

Tony may have been present and accounted for, but he doesn’t remember a single thing about the ceremony other than Steve—he stood before Tony like the impossibility he is and, god, looked so damn _happy_. In front of all their friends and whoever else managed to sneak into the church, grinning so wide it probably hurt, Steve held his hands in the surest of grips. Everything about him was golden: his hair, his lashes, the way the sun streaming through the stained glass made him glow. He belonged in that place, surrounded by saints; the shield was strapped to his back, but in all honesty, it should’ve been a holy sword. Tony kept waiting to burst into flames for just being near him.  
  
But Steve just smiled and smiled and never once dropped Tony’s gaze or Tony’s hands.

Not once.

With a slow exhale, he wills the armor to become what it had been before: a perfect replica of the custom Tom Ford tux he commissioned. The metal encasing him ripples, softens, and then rushes to fill its new role. It takes only seconds, but Steve immediately adjusts himself to compensate for Tony’s smaller frame.

“Well, that’s a damn shame, because I do,” Tony murmurs into blood-matted hair, burying his nose there and inhaling smoke and sweat and some kind of sharp, citrusy product.

Against Tony’s throat, Steve smiles. “I do, too.”

“Then by the power vested in me by God and the great state of New York, I now pronounce you married.”

Carefully tottering around an overturned taxi, Bishop Meyers, who’s actual proof that dinosaurs once roamed the earth, peers at them from beneath his hilarious hat, which looks like it’s seen better days. It also looks like his pretty white robes were on fire at some point.

“Bishop!” Steve sits up, eyes wide, and then abandons Tony to go and help the old prune. “How did you—Are you all right?”

“Considering a giant robot man blew up the cathedral, I’m fine,” Bishop Meyers says with a shrug. Tony likes this guy, and not just because he gave Tony cranberry juice instead of sacred wine during the Catholic thing that Steve insisted on doing during the ceremony. _We’ve all wrestled with that particular demon, Mr. Stark. No reason to invite it here today._

Tony blinks, then stands himself, moseying over. “Wait, what about the other stuff? ‘To have and to hold’ and all that jazz?”

“I watched you dive into a literal tangle of robots and fly Captain Rogers to safety. I think you have ‘to have and to hold’ covered, son.” It’s said with a kind smile, although if Tony had to put any money on it, he’d say the Bishop probably wishes he were anywhere but there.

Steve snorts and swipes his arm across his forehead, smearing soot and blood over his skin and into his bangs. He looks incredible.

Bishop Meyers must see what is probably the dumbest struck-dumb expression that’s ever graced Tony’s face, because he suddenly grins. “What are you two waiting for?”

Well, certainly not for God to come and bless this shit Himself.

It wasn’t on his predictalist today that the kiss to seal the deal would basically be the two of them laughing into each other’s mouths, but in that moment he can’t help but think of the scratch of his mother’s pencil and her blocky, perfect prediction. It took a while to get here, but maybe she really did know what she was talking about in the end.

_1\. I will BE HAPPY_

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: _[how about a 'getting married' prompt for tony/steve thing((: haven't seen much of those in this fandom](http://rcmclachlan.tumblr.com/post/142714926292/how-about-a-getting-married-prompt-for)_
> 
> Also, I decided to cherry pick things from the comics, such as Extremis’s side effect of immortality and the Bleeding Edge armor, and merge them into something that suited the story. Sorry for any confusion.
> 
> Unbeta'd.


End file.
